Lauren B. Collister

I consider myself a librarian and a scholar.

In my work, I have made it my mission to promote the use and understanding of digital culture and tools. Most recently, I have turned my focus to scholarly communication and advocacy for Open Access. I work in scholarly communication, helping scholars disseminate their research and promoting open scholarly research.

This interest stems from my background as a scholar. As a researcher, my goal is to further the scholarly understanding of digital societies by researching how language is used as a social tool in online environments. By focusing on online gaming, I study cases where language and communication are not the primary focus of interaction. The activity-based nature of online games can reveal how language is used as a tool to achieve goals, while retaining its status as a resource for social knowledge. My research often relies on information and data freely given.

I also have considerable experience as a teacher in university contexts. I have taught the courses Introduction to Linguistics, Cross-Cultural Communication, and Language and Gender. As an instructor, my aim is to make the material accessible and interesting to students of all backgrounds, and to foster an intellectual curiosity about language. I guide students by showing them how linguistics is relevant to their daily lives and their chosen fields, and encourage them to explore new ways that the insights of linguistics can further their understanding of the world. My goal is to see the study of linguistics be a fundamental part of post-secondary education, and to bring the understanding of language as a science to as many scholars as possible. I strive to incorporate digital culture and online tools into my teaching in as many ways as possible in my courses.